Sinologists

"Hawkes brought to bear such a wide range of rhetorical skills, such penetrating insight into character, such finely honed dialogue, such superbly crafted versification; but more than anything, such a profound sense of humanity, such fun and exhilaration, such melancholy and wisdom. In it he succeeds in grasping to the full, and yet at the same time transcending, the sheer Chineseness of the work, making it into a real novel for reading, revealing it as a true masterpiece of world literature."

"I'd thought that what I'd like to do is to a translation where I don't have to think about academic considerations. Scholarly considerations. I'll just think about how to present – this is Penguins, after all – how to present this book in such a way that I do the whole of it but at the same time it's enjoyable for the English reader, if possible, and they can get some of the pleasure out of it that I got myself."

"Many of the symbols, word-plays and secret patterns with which the novel abounds seem to be used out of sheer ebullience, as though the author was playing some sort of game with himself and did not much care whether he was observed or not. Chinese devotees of the novel often continue to read and reread it throughout their lives and to discover more of these little private jokes each time they read it."

"The idea that the worldling's 'reality' is illusion and that life itself is a dream from which we shall eventually awake is of course a Buddhist one; but in Xueqin's hands it becomes a poetical means of demonstrating that his characters are both creatures of his imagination and at the same time the real companions of his golden youth. To that extent it can be thought of as a literary device rather than as a deeply held philosophy, though it is really both."

"Our task is not the training of interpreters, nor the indulgence of exotic tastes, nor the revelation of some arcane Truth which the Orient possesses but we do not, nor the mastery of a sterile Asiatic scholasticism, but literature. If universities are not to teach language by means of literature—by means of books which are intrinsically worth-while reading, I for one do not want to be a university teacher."

"We must make [the Honour School of Chinese] sufficiently broad and humane to satisfy those whose interests are not narrowly philological [...] by presenting Chinese literature as a part of our total human heritage; [and] we must always insist that the Honour School should be based on the study of literature."

"A translator has divided loyalties. He has a duty to his author, a duty to his reader and a duty to the text. The three are by no means identical and are often hard to reconcile."

"My one abiding principle has been to translate everything – even puns. For although this is...an 'unfinished' novel, it was written (and rewritten) by a great artist with his very lifeblood. I have therefore assumed that whatever I find in it is there for a purpose and must be dealt with somehow or other. I cannot pretend always to have done so successfully, but if I can convey to the reader even a fraction of the pleasure this Chinese novel has given me, I shall not have lived in vain."

"Dr. Legge, from his raw literary training when he began his work, and the utter want of critical insight and literary perception he showed to the end, was really nothing more than a great sinologue, that is to say, a pundit with a very learned but dead knowledge of Chinese books."

"The Master said, [...] "Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles." [...] "Have no friends not equal to yourself." [...] "When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.""

"To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage."

"When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves."

"When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them."

"The Master standing by a stream, said, "It passes on just like this, not ceasing day or night!""

"The scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."

"The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions."

"I cannot help dancing with joy to hear that the doctrines of our sages have now become available to [people of] the Western Sea. [...] James Legge has proven himself a man of culture and courage [...] by studying the way of our sages through the commentaries [...] so as to transform the [Western] barbarians."

"James Legge had a rare largeness and simplicity of nature, and was distinguished by the dignity which never fails to adorn the single-minded man. He was, though so upright, as gentle as a child, and while severely conscientious he was saved by his delightful humour from being either fierce or fanatical. [...] He was a man of fine presence, pure purpose, and courageous speech [...]. He was sent Eastwards, to the oldest of living civilisations, and he studied it with an eye made luminous by love. [...] He gained the affection and confidence of the Chinese as but few foreigners have ever done, for he loved them truly, and they knew the simple integrity of his love. [...] Did he not judge with charity as well as knowledge? He had the insight which comes of the heart even more than of the head into their literature and religion; and he saw that the primary condition of making the “'est influential in the East was to make the East intelligible to the West. [...] Out of this understanding came his magnificent edition of the Chinese Classics. Of its learning it does not become me to speak; the invincible patience, the heroic industry that went to its production, we can all admire. But only those who knew the man can appreciate the idea, the splendid dream of humanity and religion that gave it birth."

"One habit he maintained almost to his death, a habit which was the cause of no little astonishment among his friends. He habitually rose about 3 A.M., and worked at his desk for five hours, while the rest of the household slept. Soon after his arrival, the lighted study attracted the night-policeman to the house, 'fearful lest, at so suspicious an hour, mischief in some dishonest form or other was afoot.'"

"Legge made a fetish of literalness, as if a certain air of foreign remoteness, rather than clarity, were the mark of fidelity. What Mencius said was this, in exactly twelve words in Chinese, that when armies were lined up with spears and shields to attack a city, "the weather is less important than the terrain, and the terrain less important than the army morale." Or, more literally, if one preferred: "Sky-times not so good as ground-situation; ground-situation not so good as human harmony." To any Chinese child "sky-times" simply means the weather and can mean nothing else; "ground-situation" means the terrain, and "human harmony" means the army morale. But, according to Legge, Mencius said, "Opportunities of time (vouchsafed by) Heaven are not equal to advantages of situation (afforded by) the Earth, and advantages of situation (afforded by) the Earth are not equal to (the union arising from) the accord of Men.""

"'If the Government gets hold of you they'll flog you to death; if the Buddhists get hold of you they'll starve you to death.'"

"The translator who can be accurate and yet idiomatic is both craftsman and artist. [...] Such a one is Arthur Waley, translator of exquisite Chinese poetry and of the monumental Japanese novel by Lady Murasaki. Translator Waley learned both Japanese and the still more difficult Chinese from native teachers in London. He has never been east of Suez, and yet he is a recognized authority on literature and art of the Far East. By profession Assistant in the Oriental Section of the British Museum Print Room, his favorite diversion is the poetry of Chinese Po Chu-i."

"Waley is a special case. He is a fine poet who has deliberately limited himself, as a kind of rigorous aesthetic discipline—a little like the self-imposed rigors of Paul Valéry—to translation from the Chinese and Japanese."

"Greatness in men is a rare but unmistakable quality. In our small profession it is unlikely we shall see a man of such magnitude again."

"Whatever Waley's achievement as a poet may ultimately appear to be, there can be little doubt that his most widely-known works, the novels Genji and Monkey, are likely to survive longest in popular regard. Indeed, both are likely to retain a permanent place in English literature [...]. It is unthinkable that other translations of these novels could ever supersede them in popularity, and improbable that the astringent charm and ascetic delicacy of their style could displease the taste of any age, however much literary fashions may fluctuate and change. Of course he made mistakes—so did the translators of the Authorized Version; but not enough ever to make his translations obsolete."

"He belonged not only to the world of oriental studies, but to the world of literature."

"A large capacity to accept the assumptions of any world-view, without assuming any merit for our own, is the basic virtue of Waley's mind."

"Tripitaka stepped lightly ashore. He had discarded his earthly body; he was cleansed from the corruption of the senses, from the fleshly inheritance of those bygone years. His was now the transcendent wisdom that leads to the Further Shore, the mastery that knows no bounds."

"Suddenly they saw a body in the water, drifting rapidly down stream. Tripitaka stared at it in consternation. Monkey laughed. 'Don't be frightened, Master,' he said. 'That's you.' And Pigsy said, 'It's you, it's you.' Sandy clapped his hands. 'It's you, it's you,' he cried. The ferryman too joined in the chorus. 'There you go!' he cried. 'My best congratulations.'"

"A team of horses cannot overtake a word that has left the mouth."

"'Master, we can start now; I have killed them all.' 'I am very sorry to hear it,' said Tripitaka. 'One has no right to kill robbers, however violent and wicked they may be. The most one may do is to bring them before a magistrate. It would have been quite enough in this case if you had driven them away. Why kill them? You have behaved with a cruelty that ill becomes one of your sacred calling.' 'If I had not killed them,' said Monkey, 'they would have killed you.' 'A priest,' said Tripitaka, 'should be ready to die rather than commit acts of violence.'"

"A handful of one's country's soil is worth more than ten thousand pounds of foreign gold."

"'Insensate groom! What crime is there that you have not committed? You have stolen peaches and stolen wine, upset the high feast, purloined Lao Tzu's elixir, and then taken more wine for your banquet here. You have piled up sin upon sin; do you not realize what you have done?' 'Quite true,' said Monkey, 'all quite true. What are you going to do about it?'"

"'Nothing in the world is difficult,' said the Patriarch, 'it is only our own thoughts that make things seem so.'"

"'To hope for [immortality],' said the Patriarch, 'would be like trying to fish the moon out of the water.' 'There you go again!' said Monkey. 'What pray do you mean by fishing the moon out of the water?' 'When the moon is in the sky,' said the Patriarch, 'it is reflected in the water. It looks just like a real thing, but if you try to catch hold of it, you find it is only an illusion.'"

"There was a rock that since the creation of the world had been worked upon by the pure essences of Heaven and the fine savours of Earth, the vigour of sunshine and the grace of moonlight, till at last it became magically pregnant and one day split open, giving birth to a stone egg, about as big as a playing ball. Fructified by the wind it developed into a stone monkey, complete with every organ and limb."

"Think not that I have come in quest of common flowers; but rather to bemoan the loss of one whose scent has vanished from the air."

"You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay."

"Anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken."

"I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is, and how it came into being. To begin with, it does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart."

"Though the snow-drifts of Yoshino were heaped across his path, doubt not that whither his heart is set, his footsteps shall tread out their way."

"It is in general the unexplored that attracts us."

"Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow."

"Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams."

"I would rather be dead."

"Anyone with a good classical education could learn Chinese by himself without difficulty."

"When translating prose dialogue one ought to make the characters say things that people talking English could conceivably say. One ought to hear them talking, just as a novelist hears his characters talk."

"I have not used rhyme, because what is really, in the long run, of most interest to American readers is what the poems say; and if one uses rhyme, it is impossible not to sacrifice sense to sound."

"Since the classical language has an easy grammar and limited vocabulary, a few months should suffice for the mastering of it."

"To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of supreme importance and mystery. To the Chinese, it is something commonplace, obvious—a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the emotions."